ROW80 Round Deux

For those of you who are just now following my blog, A Round of Words in 80 Days is a writing challenge designed to encourage writers to come up with writing goals on our own terms, versus other writing challenges that utilize a one-size-fits-all approach. But the best part of ROW80 is the tremendous support you get from fellow writers/authors that participate.

I am keeping my original goals (1&2) for Round 2 and adding a few new ones (3&4):

1. Write everyday - I don't have many distractions other than work obligations, so I have to condition myself to put in writing time in the morning and at night. I get easily distracted by the t.v....

2. On weekends, spend at least 3 hours writing a day - my weekends, other than Saturday mornings, are are almost always free.

3. Promotion - I will have my first novella published, The Fury, in April.

4. Finish WIP - I need to finish writing, researching and editing the final draft of Heir.

Yes, these are simple enough goals, but I need simplicity in my life in order for me to stay on track. That's the beauty of ROW80: knowing your limits and sticking to your goals.

Laundry, Mid-Terms, and Physics

It's a lazy Sunday and I have done nothing except finish the second book in The Hunger Games series, Catching Fire by Suzzane Collins. I know, I'm a bit behind on this one, but I knew that once I started I wouldn't be able to stop! But I did manage to clean the kitchen and get some laundry in between books.

In the interim, I have begun doing a bit of research on Heir. Yesterday, I picked up a copy of Michio Kaku's book, Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the 10th Dimension. Never in a million years did I expect to purchase a book on physics, but to my surprise, I enjoyed flipping through the book and I'm sure I'll learn something useful for my WIP.

Now back to my regularly scheduled program of cleaning, laundry, grading mid-terms, reading, writing, and networking...

Back on Schedule

Okay, so I've you've been following along you'll realize that I've kind of put Heir on the backburner. I got so caught up with other writing projects, twitter, my novella (still don't have a title for it!) and working on my backyard, that I put Heir aside for awhile.

But boy, I'm glad I did. There are going to be some major changes. The general storyline will remain the same, but for those that were expecting a preternatural world of elves, I sincerely apologize. After much thought and internal debate, I decided to switch gears and change Etta's new world to that of an alternate reality.

Thankfully I'm working with an almost completed book. I've already begun tweaking it and to my surprise, it hasn't been as tedious as I'd first thought. The result is a nicer flow and I think it makes for a much better story. I had always wanted to work on a book that dealt with alternate realities/many worlds theory and after bouncing some ideas off my dad, he helped shape some of the ideas I had been toying around with for this book (My dad was my high school physics teacher...He's even met Stephen Hawking!)

So there you go. Heir is back on track, hopefully with a summer release date, and I'm feeling pretty good about it.

If It Ain't Broke...

To be honest, I'm actually surprised I stuck around to the end of Round 1. But that's the beauty of ROW80: Being able to set your own goals, holding yourself accountable, and getting massive support from other writers. Granted, I didn't always stick to my goals (there was a week that I just didn't do anything), but when it's all said and done, I got what I needed from this challenge.

I joined ROW80 a few weeks into the challenge, but my goals were simple:

So here are my goals for the next 80 53 days:

1. Write everyday - I don't have many distractions other than work obligations, so I have to condition myself to put in writing time in the morning and at night. I get easily distracted by the t.v....

2. On weekends, spend at least 3 hours writing a day - my weekends, other than Saturday mornings, are are almost always free.

What I hope to accomplish with the first two goals will ultimately lead to my third and final goal.

3. Have the first draft of my WIP completed.

***

Last night, I finished up the final revisions on my WIP and nervously sent it off to my beta readers! Now, it wasn't the WIP I had in mind when I started this challenge, but nonetheless, I was able to accomplish one of my goals. So I am happy to say that by this time next month, I'll have my first novella published!

Round 2 kick-off is April 4th. I'll probably stick to my original goals and perhaps add a few more to include social networking and marketing.